Central Avenue Drag by Pete Johnson - cover by Thomas Pibal

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Mailing list, upcoming shows, etc: www.thomaspibal.com

This was recorded at my gig at Cannova's Pizzeria in Neenah, WI on February 25th, 2023.

I call this "the song that got me kicked out of church." Here's the story:

When I was in college I switched majors from piano performance to vocal performance and began studying this piece. There were several reasons I switched but one of them was that I wanted to study more jazz and contemporary styles of music with my piano teacher so this is one of the pieces we started working on in my piano lessons. I performed it later that semester for the "Sandwich and a Steinway" concert at the Steinway piano gallery in Milwaukee.

It just so happened that some folks at the church I attended at the time had noticed my musical talent and encouraged me to perform some special music during a church service. So I asked them what they wanted me to play and they said: "Oh, well it's going to be special music during the offering, so it could be almost anything." I said I could perform a lot of things in a lot of styles and that didn't narrow it down much. They said "just play whatever you're working on in your piano lessons!" I asked if they were sure about that and they said it would be fine.
So I played this.
It did not go fine.
I mean, I played well but apparently this style of music was quite taboo in that church and they made a point of telling me so after the service.

Personally, I love blues, I love jazz, I love gospel, I find these styles of music to contain a lot of joy (despite the reputation of the blues) and I find I have a lot of joy in my savior Jesus Christ so it only makes sense to me to play music that reflects that joy. Unfortunately when you communicate with art, like all communication, there's a sender, a message and a receiver and ultimately I don't think that the correct message was received in that instance. But I still love those people, I know God loves them too and I still visit from time to time.
While I did end up seeking other believers to fellowship with that were more sympatico with my tastes, I have to admit it's not entirely accurate or fair to say I was ACTUALLY kicked out of church. But they didn't have me play piano again after that...and it's fun to say :P